New York City: At the point of a knife
11 December 2022 By Kareem Abiodun Giwa
New York City's layout and map. (Courtesy: Encyclopedia Britannica)
Canarsie was the first place I lived in Brooklyn, New York. A beautiful home with an attractive set of houses. My host has accepted the area as his adopted home. I met him and left him there. And he is still there as I write. So I don't fault his decision.
People have different reasons for living in New York City. Some people love venturing out every day to watch and count the skyscrapers. Others like to watch beautiful ladies shaking their bumbum on the street. Some love partying, and others believe being workaholics is the solution to escaping the trapping nature of a mega city.
New York is a megacity. Every city has an allure that traps people. Everyone wants to live big in the city. To be fabulous is to live in an apartment. It is the beginning of getting trapped and the path to a seemingly endless struggle. I rented a room at Linden Blvd. between Nostrand Avenue and from a Jamaican lady named Marcia when I left Canarsie after three months of living there, planning and hoping for a future flat.
Though my income was low, paying just $100 a week for space provided comfort. I waited to enter a flat after leaving Marcia's apartment. I got into another room in another apartment owned by a Jamaican female at Crown Heights. I realized the payment for the space was part of their income and budget and a way to survive an economic trap.
I hate anyone knocking on my door on check day. Therefore, I decided to get my pad. I got one on Nostrand avenue near Winthrop, a stone's throw from Kings County Hospital. The entry to the Winthrop Train station was on my block. I step out and get into the station like rich men get into their cars and get away. The train was my car. However, I understood I was getting into a trap the moment I sensed paying for a flat might stand between college and me. I called my landlord, a man I thought was a gentleman operating a real estate office below my apartment, that I planned to go to school and would be unable to pay $1200 a month. I told him I wanted him to help me get a place, not above $700 a month.
"You want to break the lease." He vowed to sue. Later, he called me and said he would allow me to look for another place if I allowed him to show the apartment to prospective tenants. I got another kitchenette pad within a fortnight for $700 at 58 Linden Blvd, sandwiched between Bedford and Flatbush Avenue. I lived here for my entire schooling years, between 2007 and 2012. Shortly after moving in, the police sought the landlord in my former apartment at Nostrand Avenue.
"I was a tenant in his building. I left and got another place. I don't know anything about his whereabouts." The end of the story. I was surprised to find out they were looking for him. I praised my haunch. What would have happened if I were still in his apartment? My landlord's story is part of my knowledge of people struggling to escape a trap. Marcia also threatened me with a knife when I went to the house a week after I moved out to pick up a few items I left in the room.
She not only bid me farewell on my departure but came down to the roadside, where the moving truck was packed, and wished me well. However, as soon as I entered the room, she came in behind me, showed me a spot of ink on the floor, and said I should wipe it clean. I protested I did not put the ink there, but she insisted I must remove the ink. I agreed to remove the ink anyway. I went on kneeling and began rubbing the ink with a piece of paper towel and water, but the ink was not disappearing and let her know, unaware she was holding a knife on my head.
She vowed to do the unexpected if I failed to vanish the ink. I went into a silent prayer, still on my knees. An idea came into my head. I said, "Marcia - if I give you some money can you get someone to help remove the ink? She instantly demanded $100.00. I begged her, still kneeling, to accept $50.00, and she wanted it right there on the spot. I again sought her accommodation to allow me to bring the money later because I had no money, and she let it. I did not ask why she pulled a knife against me. I left the few things I had in the room and never returned there again.
It is not strange that the urge to survive challenging economic situations pushes me to the extreme, like having two or three jobs and, if that is impossible, sublet a room or two in your pad. It was a long before I dabbled into two positions. I sublet my space in Flatbush to a Trinidadian guy when the economic situation pushed me to the wall in 2009. I posted a handwritten postal in some areas on Flatbush Avenue. And the guy who became my roommate for about one year and a half surfaced with an application.
He worked in the car wash. I told him I went through that experience. He was nice. He paid for the space without failing every week. He became a helper in a time of need to survive a trap. I did not want him to go. He, too, did not want to leave me. But when I told him my wife would be arriving, we both had no choice but to bid each other goodbye.
Having a roommate to share the burden of the cost of an apartment lifts a heavy load. Yet, many New Yorkers complain aloud about the high rent, and no one seems to hear. The result is a deluge of tenant and landlord cases in the housing court that not even the city's intervention in helping renters can ameliorate renters' headaches.
Something worse than Marcia's knife. You are paying rent and upending a good life. The reason we all want own and not rent.
People have different reasons for living in New York City. Some people love venturing out every day to watch and count the skyscrapers. Others like to watch beautiful ladies shaking their bumbum on the street. Some love partying, and others believe being workaholics is the solution to escaping the trapping nature of a mega city.
New York is a megacity. Every city has an allure that traps people. Everyone wants to live big in the city. To be fabulous is to live in an apartment. It is the beginning of getting trapped and the path to a seemingly endless struggle. I rented a room at Linden Blvd. between Nostrand Avenue and from a Jamaican lady named Marcia when I left Canarsie after three months of living there, planning and hoping for a future flat.
Though my income was low, paying just $100 a week for space provided comfort. I waited to enter a flat after leaving Marcia's apartment. I got into another room in another apartment owned by a Jamaican female at Crown Heights. I realized the payment for the space was part of their income and budget and a way to survive an economic trap.
I hate anyone knocking on my door on check day. Therefore, I decided to get my pad. I got one on Nostrand avenue near Winthrop, a stone's throw from Kings County Hospital. The entry to the Winthrop Train station was on my block. I step out and get into the station like rich men get into their cars and get away. The train was my car. However, I understood I was getting into a trap the moment I sensed paying for a flat might stand between college and me. I called my landlord, a man I thought was a gentleman operating a real estate office below my apartment, that I planned to go to school and would be unable to pay $1200 a month. I told him I wanted him to help me get a place, not above $700 a month.
"You want to break the lease." He vowed to sue. Later, he called me and said he would allow me to look for another place if I allowed him to show the apartment to prospective tenants. I got another kitchenette pad within a fortnight for $700 at 58 Linden Blvd, sandwiched between Bedford and Flatbush Avenue. I lived here for my entire schooling years, between 2007 and 2012. Shortly after moving in, the police sought the landlord in my former apartment at Nostrand Avenue.
"I was a tenant in his building. I left and got another place. I don't know anything about his whereabouts." The end of the story. I was surprised to find out they were looking for him. I praised my haunch. What would have happened if I were still in his apartment? My landlord's story is part of my knowledge of people struggling to escape a trap. Marcia also threatened me with a knife when I went to the house a week after I moved out to pick up a few items I left in the room.
She not only bid me farewell on my departure but came down to the roadside, where the moving truck was packed, and wished me well. However, as soon as I entered the room, she came in behind me, showed me a spot of ink on the floor, and said I should wipe it clean. I protested I did not put the ink there, but she insisted I must remove the ink. I agreed to remove the ink anyway. I went on kneeling and began rubbing the ink with a piece of paper towel and water, but the ink was not disappearing and let her know, unaware she was holding a knife on my head.
She vowed to do the unexpected if I failed to vanish the ink. I went into a silent prayer, still on my knees. An idea came into my head. I said, "Marcia - if I give you some money can you get someone to help remove the ink? She instantly demanded $100.00. I begged her, still kneeling, to accept $50.00, and she wanted it right there on the spot. I again sought her accommodation to allow me to bring the money later because I had no money, and she let it. I did not ask why she pulled a knife against me. I left the few things I had in the room and never returned there again.
It is not strange that the urge to survive challenging economic situations pushes me to the extreme, like having two or three jobs and, if that is impossible, sublet a room or two in your pad. It was a long before I dabbled into two positions. I sublet my space in Flatbush to a Trinidadian guy when the economic situation pushed me to the wall in 2009. I posted a handwritten postal in some areas on Flatbush Avenue. And the guy who became my roommate for about one year and a half surfaced with an application.
He worked in the car wash. I told him I went through that experience. He was nice. He paid for the space without failing every week. He became a helper in a time of need to survive a trap. I did not want him to go. He, too, did not want to leave me. But when I told him my wife would be arriving, we both had no choice but to bid each other goodbye.
Having a roommate to share the burden of the cost of an apartment lifts a heavy load. Yet, many New Yorkers complain aloud about the high rent, and no one seems to hear. The result is a deluge of tenant and landlord cases in the housing court that not even the city's intervention in helping renters can ameliorate renters' headaches.
Something worse than Marcia's knife. You are paying rent and upending a good life. The reason we all want own and not rent.
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